The Unique YotaPhone by Yota Gets The Hands On Treatment at CES 2013

This year’s CES convention didn’t quite impress everybody despite featuring some innovative ideas and devices. There were tons of appliances or devices which you wouldn’t find useful in your daily life, but I guess the point is to just tell us how far technology has advanced this year. The main gripe with visitors was that there weren’t enough smartphones on offer. Well the first day, Sony took the wraps off the stunning Xperia Z smartphone and there were devices like the Huawei Ascend D2, Ascend Mate, ZTE Grand S etc launching during the course of the event. So it’s not that there weren’t any smartphones at all. Sure, companies like HTC were missing from the event, but I guess other manufacturers more than made up for it with their offerings. And there was another smartphone which was silently shown off during the event, and that is the YotaPhone made by Russian manufacturer Yota. The smartphone first appeared on the internet in about a month ago with its unique dual display form factor which managed to bowl us over. With a 4.3-inch E-Ink display on the back and a 4.3-inch HD display on the front, we don’t get to see smartphones like this too often. This is a multitasking user’s dream and we were all eagerly looking forward to knowing more about the device.

And the gang at Yota was present at CES 2013 to show off this cool new smartphone to the visitors. Shedding light on how apps interact with both displays and how the thing basically works. Although what we saw here could well be an early prototype, its functionality will remain the same even in the final product. YotaPhone will debut in Russia during the third quarter of 2013 and will launch globally in Q4 2013. The phone will also receive a formal unveiling at the MWC 2013 event next month.

The YotaPhone comes with a Snapdragon S4 dual core chip clocked at 1.4 GHz along with 2GB of RAM. For the camera lover in you, there’s a mammoth 13MP camera sensor on the back. It also comes with a 32GB storage option which is neat too. These are just the specs that were mentioned during the event and the actual smartphone might sport slightly different specs. The stand out feature for me is the ability to flick over apps/content on to the E-Ink display from the main display, which can handle anything from notifications to boarding passes. And yes, did we mention it runs Android 4.1 out of the box?

All in all the YotaPhone is a perfect smartphone with a dab of uniqueness to go with it. Sure it won’t appeal to the masses out there for the simple reason that this won’t be launched on a larger scale and also because there will be newer smartphones with beefier specs making its way during the course of the next few months. But I’m sold to the concept, are you?